Organisational culture, organisational commitment, self-efficacy and turnover intentions among academic staff in selected universities in Uganda

Abstract

Turnover intentions remain a serious and persistent issue of discussion in many organisations. Turnover intention is a conscious willingness to leave the organization, which is detrimental to university performance when competent staff leave. Thus, it is becoming increasingly necessary for universities to find strategies to retain their academic staff. Existing studies linking organisational culture and Turnover intentions have produced inconclusive results. Also, few indirect and interaction effects studies have been conducted in this area, particularly in developing countries. This study investigated the interaction effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between organisational culture and Turnover intentions as mediated by organisational commitment. To determine the effect of organisational culture, organisational commitment, and self-efficacy on turnover intentions and organisational culture on organisational commitment. Additionally, organisational commitment mediates between organisational culture and turnover intentions. The interaction effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between: organisational culture and organisational commitment, organisational culture and turnover intentions, and organisational commitment and turnover intentions. Finally, self-efficacy has conditional effects on organisational culture and turnover intentions via organisational commitment. The study was grounded in the theory of planned behaviour, institutional theory, the theory of organisational commitment, and social cognitive theory. The study was informed by a positivist research paradigm, whose main tenets rely on a quantitative research approach. The study adopted an explanatory cross-sectional design. The target population included 4192 academic staff from selected Ugandan universities. A sample of 878 academic staff was obtained using a stratified simple random sampling technique. Primary data was collected using questionnaires. The data was analysed using hierarchical multiple regression and PROCESS macro models. The study revealed that organisational culture (β = -.216, p < .05), and organisational commitment (β = -.185, p < .05) significantly predict turnover intentions while self-efficacy (β = -.060, p > .05) insignificantly predicts turnover intentions. Also, organisational culture (β = .630, p <.05) significantly affects organisational commitment. Organisational commitment mediated between organisational culture and turnover intentions (β = -.306, CI=-.483, -.131). Furthermore, self-efficacy moderated between organisational culture and turnover intentions (β = -.3.13, CI= -.6.247, - .020), and organisational commitment and turnover intentions (β = -.4.35, CI= -.575, -.045). Lastly, self-efficacy moderated the indirect link between organisational culture and turnover intentions via organisational commitment (β = -2.87, BootSE= .98, CI = -.4.76, -.95). Therefore, the study concludes that the indirect effect of organisational culture on turnover intentions via organisational commitment is influenced by self-efficacy. The study’s findings corroborate with planned behaviour theory, institutional theory, organisational commitment theory, and social cognitive theory in predicting academic staff’s intentions to quit. Drawing on the findings, policy makers and National Council for Higher Education should strengthen their oversight role under quality assurance unit to ensure universities operate within the required staff establishments. National Planning Authority and Ministry of Labour need to develop a national labour policy to keep track of all HR inventory statistics, including turnover for easy management of HR processes, timely provision of information and decision making. Internally, university managers need to revisit their HR recruitment and on-boarding programmes to enhance staff attraction and retention. Finally, since the study focused on universities, the results may not be generalized to other sectors. Hence, future studies could focus on other sectors. Future researchers may also extend the current study by taking into consideration additional variables (leadership, organisational support) in order to explain the unexplained variance in turnover intentions.